Have Space Suit Will Travel
by Robert A. Heinlein · first published 1978
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…movies be prepared to love the books. If you hated the movies, no problem, the books are far better. OR science fiction. Read all of Heinlein's books for young adults. Start with Double Star then read Have Space Suit Will Travel. A Door Into Summer speaks to any engineer. Tunnel In the Sky is the classic survival story. When you are hooked on Heinlein read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; it only takes a chapter to get used to his…
on “Ask HN: Are books worth it?” ↗Have Space Suit Will Travel (Heinlein) Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein) Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (one story in the book "Different Seasons" by Stephen King) Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck) The Martian Chronicles…
on “Ask HN: What book had a big impact on you as a child or teenager?” ↗…fiction writer and one of my favourites is All You Zombies where he deals with the paradox of time travel and ideas like when you are your own grandparent was definitely different. His juvenile series (Have Space Suit, Will Travel) were all benign enough for young kids without any ‘corrupting’ thought seeds and upsetting parents. His stories about parallel worlds and lives could be said to border on metaphysical. His all encompassing…
on “Sci-Fi Author Robert Heinlein Was Basically MacGyver” ↗Farnham's Freehold was the book that made me lose a lot of respect for Heinlein. I started reading him as a 13-14 year old - books like "Have Space Suit, Will Travel", "Farmer in the Sky", and "Starman Jones" - and ate them up. I got older and my dad recommended "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "Starship Troopers"; I really liked reading him alongside Asimov, who…
on “Why a Post-Nuclear World Would Look Nothing Like “Mad Max”” ↗I read just about every Heinlein story I could get my hands on as a teenager. The funny thing is that the one's I thought were sort of stupid - e.g. Have Space Suit Will Travel and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - because they were only about the solar system, I've found to be among my favorites as an adult. Then again, I couldn't get through Friday back then, but found the description…
on “Sci-Fi Novels You Should Read” ↗This was a theme of Heinlein's 1958 Have Space Suit, Will Travel (which among other things accurately tells you what you need to learn to get into MIT and CalTech, and how polite the latter's rejection letter is, which I can attest to :-). Even going back to his first…
on “Techies Who Are Homeschooling Their Kids” ↗…one of Heinlein's juvenile novels referred to this as a skew-flip maneuver; I was quite impressed reading about it at about age 12, several years after its publication date. [Just remembered the title: Have Space Suit - Will Travel, a play on the title of the TV show Have Gun - Will Travel] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Space_Suit%E2%80%94Will_T...
on “New nuclear engine concept could help realize 3-month trips to Mars” ↗Learning is itself addicting; for me it's almost as addicting, and a lot more fun than TV. Apparently, I'm not the first to feel this way; Heinlein's protagonist in "Have Space Suit, Will Travel" made a similar observation.
on “Ask HN: Name for people who study without getting around to doing” ↗Great article. I especially love the Heinlein quotation from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, for hopefully obvious reasons. There is another similar quote from Heinlein's "Have Space Suit Will Travel" (written several years earlier) that is also good programming advice: "Daddy says that, in a dilemma, it is helpful to change any variable, then reexamine the problem."
on “The Clean Coder: The Craftsman 62, The Dark Path.” ↗…"Federal Aid to Education" was a big political issue before "Sputnik ended that debate" (it was launched in 1957; http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2010/Q1/view613.html). Heinlein also touched on this in Have Space Suit—Will Travel in 1958.
on “The Real Problem with Waiting for Superman” ↗…CalTech's (roughly "We receive many more qualified applications than we have slots for", Heinlein even commented on the letter's quality in his "what you have to do to get into a good university" book, Have Space Suit, Will Travel), if you don't get in you won't know where they judged you to be. One last bit of info: MIT really likes evidence that you can projects. Beside geographic diversity it's pretty clear that's what made…
on “Bill Gates: Why MIT matters” ↗It sends them a very nice rejection letter, as Heinlein notes in his 1958 Have Space Suit---Will Travel (his juveniles were intended to teach readers what they needed to know to go out into space, from attitudes to what they needed to learn. The latter was touched upon in the first, the 1947 Rocket Ship…
on “2+2=What? Parents rail against Common Core math” ↗This reminds me of "Have Space Suit—Will Travel" Science-fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, where the hero make frequent uses of his slide rule to save himself from dangerous situations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Space_Suit%E2%80%94Will_T...
on “Illustrated Self-Guided Course on How to Use the Slide Rule (2012)” ↗…surprised me with it after I mastered a ten-inch polyphase. We ate potato soup that week—but Dad says you should always budget luxuries first. I knew where it was. Home on my desk. Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958)
on “How Slide Rules Work” ↗I keep thinking of the story "Have Space Suit—Will Travel", except it now it is "Have Welders—Will Construct Space Craft". What SpaceX is doing is both crazy complex rocket science, yet it's also quaintly pedestrian. It makes space feel more accessible to me.
on “SpaceX’s Starship SN1 prototype blows up during pressure test on its Texas pad” ↗